Barely Breathing
by august
Summary: After they return to Earth, Seven is taken to a psychiatric institution.


Barely Breathing  
by august  
cApril 1999  
  


Startrek and all associated off-spring are registered in trademark to Paramount Pictures. Lyrics from 'Dream Brother' by the sublime Jeff Buckley. Please seek out his records.

Rated R for **violence**. Consider yourself forewarned.

*** This story contains suggestive same-sex consenting situations. IF this offends, go back to shooting rabbits and stay away from my stories.

  
  
  
_ I feel afraid  
and I call your name.  
I love your voice and your dance insane.  
I hear your words and I know your pain,  
with your head in your hands and her kiss on the lips of another  
Your eyes to the ground  
and the world spinning round forever.  
  
Sleep in the sand with the ocean washing over.  
_   
  
  
  


I think if I had realised just what individuality meant, I would have fought harder to remain in the collective. I tell this to my doctors, and they nod their heads and talk amongst themselves. I realised a few months ago that I was not merely in hospital, but a psychiatric institution. I am not sure how long I have been here, or even why they hold me.

They encourage me to talk about the attack. I remember it clearly, for it is amongst my first memories of Earth. The astromestrics lab on Voyager finally found a worm hole - it required us to travel several light years off our determined course, but in the end offered us a shorter route to the Alpha Quadrant. The worm hole took several weeks to negotiate, and even then deposited us several light years outside Vulcan airspace.

Nevertheless, they were home. 

There were many parades, and accolades. There were even several protesters, who objected to the Maquis involvement on Voyager. They were summarily ignored. Captain Janeway warned me several times that there would be many people who would object to my presence. She was right, there were.

  


I saw the group of people, but I never saw the weapon. The doctors told me later it was the newest form of personal weapon. It worked much like the stun setting on a phaser, except that the victim remains lucid and cognitive the entire time. Apparently the energy on the weapon is focused on motor neuron control, so that the victim cannot do anything but can feel everything.

I was walking in a park just outside of Starfleet HQ when it had happened. It was one of the first times I had been allowed to wander Earth for myself. The attendant in the lobby of HQ had continually informed me that it 'smelt like rain coming'. I had hoped to investigate this possibility.

I collapsed after the first energy pulse. I fell forward and smashed my chin on the ground. I could hear voices close to me, but could not make my body move to look. I felt hands on my body, but I couldn't seem to move to shake them off. It was a most disturbing sensation, not being able to connect body with mind. I tried to speak, but all that came out was a guttural noise.

I do not know how many there were. There was a man and a woman, who picked me up. I tried to thank them, to explain that I did not know what was wrong with me. But as they held me in place, I understood their intent. There were bruises on my arms from where they gripped me.

I know that the doctors accessed my Borg senses and played back the attack. One commented on my endurance, and it was meant as a compliment. I never thought of myself as having two memories before that day. A Borg memory and a human memory. I didn't want either.

But I had both, so that it was not enough I could taste and smell the attack again, but I could play it back with perfect clarity. A continuous loop of sensory assault. I could not forget the whir of arms, of legs. I went down, you see, after the first energy pulse. My chin hit the ground and people held me up. But I can remember, twice, how it happened. And I feel it all the same.

  


Someone found me, later. I was taken to a Starfleet hospital. The resistance of my Borg implants in comparison to my human flesh was noted. My motor neuron control slowly returned. The doctors tell me that it's impossible, but somehow I don't feel like I ever fully recovered. I feel like I've been walking a little slower ever since.

  


And that's how I ended up here. I don't really understand why they keep me. They don't speak favorably of the Captain's decision to separate me from the collective. I think that they would be happier if I were still a Borg, still 50 000 light years away. After a while, I began to think the same thing.

They watch everything I do. Sometimes I talk to people, and I feel like I did on Voyager. Most of the time, though, I am aware that they note everything I say. They pierce their lips together when I talk about adapting. I don't know how to explain that I can't do anything else. It's what **I** know. It's what she taught me.

  


One day Captain Janeway visited me.

I was surprised, to say the least. Up until then, B'Elanna Torres and Neelix had been the only ones to visit. I suspect now that the Captain had come to meet with the doctors. Not with me. Never with me.

"Seven." She had come to my room. I knew that she would, and had spent several minutes planning how I was to greet her. I finally decided to stand by the window. Her habit.

"Captain."

"How are you?" The words were pushed out between a breath, and she studied me intently as she made them. I felt like I was once again her experiment, her project. I realised I had missed that feeling.

"I do not wish to remain here." I heard myself say. I did not recognise the desperation in my tone. I did not realise I had been feeling that way.

"Seven, you're not well. The doctors want to-"

"-I am operating at an efficient capacity, Captain. I have adapted to the-"

As she crossed the room to come to me, I forgot what I was saying. She stood before me, and I found I was not expecting her to be so much shorter. I didn't think I could forget that.

"Are they treating you well?"

"I do not belong here, Captain." I repeated. She turned away from me to sit at the couch beneath the window.

"The doctors are concerned with your . . . integration on Earth. It's for your own safety."

"I have never required protection, Captain. You know that." I was sitting next to her on the couch now. 

"They tell me you almost died from the attack, Seven." She said quietly. I did not answer, which was a type of answer in itself, I think. She moved towards me, and took my hands. They must have been cold, because she clasped them tightly. She was hurting me. "There is nothing I can do. It's an order from Starfleet."

I suspect, in hindsight, that I had expected her to visit me with news that I could leave. I had been expecting her to spend every moment concocting an elaborate scheme to free me. I noticed, detached, that her collar had four pips on it. She had been doing other things, it seems.

"I see." I echoed, moments later. We sat in silence.

She leaned forward and for the strangest moment I thought that she was going to kiss me. But her hand then touched my face and she tucked my hair behind my ear. I froze: still, silent, dead. I didn't want to breathe and I tried not to look her way.

"I'm sorry." She said, and I think that she probably was.

I never asked her what for, I guess I was supposed to know. I was sorry, too. 

She tried to make some conversation with me, but I have never found it to be a particularly useful exercise. Eventually, she left. I did not want her to go, but I did not know how I could make her stay.

  


She came back again, the next night. It was very late. She stood at the end of my bed, staring at me. I pretended to be asleep. I realised there was someone else in the room

"I appreciate you accommodating me at this late hour." She said.

"It's an honor to meet you, Admiral Janeway." I recognised the voice as one of the doctors. "And Seven gets so few visitors here, I doubt that she would mind."

I don't know what she said in reply, if she said anything at all.

"Shall I wake her for you, Admiral?" 

There was a pause before "No. Let her sleep." 

The room was silent, and I suspected that they had left until I felt a hand on my foot. When the Captain . . . Admiral spoke, I thought that maybe she was crying. I didn't dare to look.

"She was a brilliant scientist, doctor." She said, in a voice so full of sadness that I wanted to sit up then, to say 'surprise, I am awake'; to watch her smile for me. Instead, I lay there. Barely breathing. "She deserved more than to rot away here."

  


That afternoon was the last time I had ever saw her. Sometimes she would appear before me, on the newsfeed or a holo-vid, but always for a short time and never how I remember it. 

I left the hospital only three years ago now. I don't know where to go. There is nothing for me left on Earth, and not too many ships are willing to hire an ex-Borg. I am using the credits that Starfleet gave me for back-pay at the moment. When they run out, I do not know what I will do. 

The last thing I remember of that afternoon was her hand on my foot, as she talked of me in past tense. Like I had already died. I sometimes think that if I'd know that afternoon was going to be the last time I saw her, I *would* have sat up, I would have opened my eyes.

But then, I suspect there are a lot of things I would have done differently, if I'd known.

The End.

  
  
  
  
[][1]  
  


   [1]: http://members.tripod.com/~Appelsini/



End file.
